A Product Experience Strategy defines all aspects of the interaction with a product ranging from expectations to usage. You can evolve your product strategy based on customer feedback. The key is integrating customer experience access points and creating action plans to address shortcomings in a timely way while assuring customers of your best intentions. Start by doing user research and surveys to get a fresh perspective on your customer community. Analyze the total customer experience, from purchase to end of life, and identify the top customer issues. Brainstorm options for addressing shortcomings.

Planning the Research

Your strategy should define how to measure customer interaction with your product. You might measure how easy it is to learn, accomplish a task and how happy customers are with the results. Determine the scope of what you want to assess. For example, how easy it is for customers to transfer skills from another similar product (typically an earlier model)? It is much less expensive to change a product before it is released, so plan to test early in the product development life cycle. Create a plan and statement of tasks to accomplish your goals. Communicate your intentions to affected product development team members to set expectations. It is essential that your research result in changes. Use surveys, interviews, and observations to figure out how customers (or potential customers) accomplish those tasks. Decide how many customers to contact, either in a single event or ongoing series.

Analyzing the Data

By reviewing the data points collected, you can discover how customers are using your product, what works well and what problems they may encounter. Common characteristics and scenarios should emerge, enabling you to make conclusive recommendations. Document these clearly and communicate your results in categorized charts and tables to visually demonstrate the benefits of utilizing customer feedback in the product development life cycle.

Refining the Product

Once you document your findings, propose solutions as well. Identify the cost of fixing problems versus customer dissatisfaction and the risk of not doing so. By establishing a robust product experience data strategy, you can be sure your product will reflect the needs of real users, which, in return, is rewarded by increased sales, customer loyalty and expanded profit margins and markets.

About the Author

Tara Duggan is a Project Management Professional (PMP) specializing in knowledge management and instructional design. For over 25 years she has developed quality training materials for a variety of products and services supporting such companies as Digital Equipment Corporation, Compaq and HP. Her freelance work is published on various websites.

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